ESO will not open properly when launched through steam - anyone else experiencing this?

Mystrasun · May 2018

Hi all!

I posted this in the bugs forum, but in hindsight it may have been better to post it here. Moderators, feel free to delete this or the other post if this was the wrong thing to do.

I'm running into issues whenever I try to launch ESO through steam. I downloaded the client from the website and added it to steam as a non-steam game. Whenever I launch the game from the steam library, the launcher works fine, but when I press the game button, the screen goes black (which is normal), then the game minimises itself.

Whenever I try to click the icon on my task bar to open the game back up, nothing happens. I opened up task manager to try and investigate what is going on, and task manager indicates that the ESO exe is open, but the status is set to "Not responding".

What is strange is that the game works just fine if I launch it outside of steam, but not with steam. Has anyone else experienced this? Is there any way I can fix it?

Cheers!

ZOS_Bill · May 2018

@Mystrasun

Try setting Steam to run as an administrator and see if that allows you to launch ESO from Steam.

Close out Steam and ESO again.
Locate the Steam icon on your desktop and right click on the icon and go to "Properties" and under the Compatibility tab, set it to "Run as Administrator" and hit apply.
Restart your computer.
Once your computer has rebooted, reopen Steam and launch the game again.

Mystrasun · May 2018

I'm afraid that following your instructions did not lead to any successful changes

ZOS_Bill · May 2018

@Mystrasun

If you're able to launch ESO by finding the .exe file in your installation folder, but not through the Steam library, there are two additional changes you may need to make.

1. The .exe that Steam requires to be launched to be compatible with the Steam overlay is not actually eso.exe, but a file called "zosSteamStarter.exe". If your Steam library is "pointing" to the wrong .exe file, it won't launch from the library. The correct file "zosSteamStarter.exe" will usually be in the following directory:

Steam\Steamapps\Common\Zenimax Online

After locating "zosSteamStarter.exe", right click it to run it as an administrator. You may want to set it to permanently run as an administrator in your Compatibility tab. You can also create a shortcut to this .exe to use it more easily in the future; this is the .exe that must be run to access the Steam overlay and log your Steam play hours.

2. In order for "zosSteamStarter.exe" to log the information such as play hours properly, you may have to lower your Windows UAC (User Account Control) settings. Lowering User Account Control settings to the minimum will allow Steam to gather this data properly.

Mystrasun · May 2018

Hi BillE, thanks for your help.

I don't think I made it abundantly clear in my opening post, but I added ESO to steam as a non steam game because I got the game before it was released on steam, so I was not able to follow your instructions precisely. That said, doing what you suggest appeared to work, but then I was unable to access the steam overlay. Some more research suggested that ironically, the steam overlay was being prevented from appearing because of the fact that I set the launcher to run as an administrator, so I had to switch it off again.

That said, even after switching the admin setting off, the game was back to running successfully. I don't know if that had anything to do with the admin settings or if a problem was steam was solved independently, but regardless, thank you for your time!

scoffix · June 2018

ZOS_BillE wrote: »

@Mystrasun

If you're able to launch ESO by finding the .exe file in your installation folder, but not through the Steam library, there are two additional changes you may need to make.

1. The .exe that Steam requires to be launched to be compatible with the Steam overlay is not actually eso.exe, but a file called "zosSteamStarter.exe". If your Steam library is "pointing" to the wrong .exe file, it won't launch from the library. The correct file "zosSteamStarter.exe" will usually be in the following directory:

Steam\Steamapps\Common\Zenimax Online

After locating "zosSteamStarter.exe", right click it to run it as an administrator. You may want to set it to permanently run as an administrator in your Compatibility tab. You can also create a shortcut to this .exe to use it more easily in the future; this is the .exe that must be run to access the Steam overlay and log your Steam play hours.

2. In order for "zosSteamStarter.exe" to log the information such as play hours properly, you may have to lower your Windows UAC (User Account Control) settings. Lowering User Account Control settings to the minimum will allow Steam to gather this data properly.

Is there a way to fix this without granting zosSteamStarter.exe elevated privileges?

Also that didn't help me, game tells me to run it via Steam (which I do, Steam - normal user / zosSteamStarter.exe - Admin)

The way it works is to run Steam as an admin, which I do, but I do not really want to do so. I'm not sure why the game worked fine without admin rights and recently the problem appeared?